Welcome to the 198th edition of The Weekly Bull Report.
Here’s a shortlist of the content we found interesting and informative over the past week…
🤔 Interesting Articles & News:
POLITICS
- French presidential elections: Macron defeats Le Pen with 58.80%. 🇫🇷
- France accuses Russian mercenaries of staging massacre in Mali to make it look as if French military left massacre behind before handing over control. 🇲🇱
- Putin has lost interest in diplomatic efforts to end his war with Ukraine and instead appears set on seizing as much Ukrainian territory as possible. 🪖
- Former Kenyan president, Mwai Kibaki, died aged 90. 🙏
- Venezuela’s Maduro government seeks to delay International Criminal Court Investigation into possible crimes against humanity. 🇦🇷
- Ex-President of Honduras extradited to U.S. on drug trafficking and weapon charges. 🇭🇳
- Argentinians are embracing cryptocurrency amid sky-high inflation. 💹
ECONOMICS
- The 2021 creatures of Goldman Sachs: Its IPOs, SPACs, Direct Listings are imploding after bonuses spiked to a record. 💥
- Egg prices continue to soar as Bird Flu spreads through 30 states – up 44% compared with last year. 🥚
- Home price expectations diverge in short- and medium-term; Sharp increases in rent expected over the next year. 📈
- Italy signs gas deal with Angola, and consolidates gas deal with Congo, in bid to boycott Russian imports. ⚡️
- Two-speed eurozone economy as services shine, factories struggle. 🇪🇺
- China exports to North Korea surge with edible oil, wheat flour in demand as trade resumes. 🇰🇵
CULTURE
- Grammy star Black Coffee: Winning the world, losing at home. 🎶
- Born as a primetime satire of Middle America, The Simpsons has become something else. 🇺🇸
- These 3-Michelin-starred plates were invented by AI. the food doesn’t even exist. 🤖
- Aki Sasamoto: An artist walks into a bar. 🥃
- Lost Charlotte Brontë manuscript sells for $1.25 million. 📜
- Original edition of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ is headed for auction. 🧟♂️
- The history behind Robert Eggers’ ‘The Northman’. 🪓
- Pope Says meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch scrapped. ❌
SOCIETY
- Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid. 🤦♂️
- Why American teens are so sad. 😔
- Florida’s Senate passes bill to end Disney’s self-governance. 👩⚖️
- Two Russian Oligarchs found dead just one day apart. 🪦
- Elon Musk says he confronted Bill Gates about shorting Tesla. 📉
- Artificial intelligence is creating a new colonial world order. 👾
- A neuroscientist debunks the most annoyingly common productivity myths. 👩💻
- Am I the asshole? Everyday moral dilemmas from Reddit. 🤔
- TobyKeith, 21-year-old Chihuahua, is officially World’s oldest dog. 🐶
- South Korea: Should BTS pop stars be pardoned military service? 🪖
TECHNOLOGY
- A day in the life of (almost) every vending machine in the world. 🧃
- New 3D Printing tech could make detection of cancer easier than ever before. (paper here) 🔍
- Six types of 3D printing you didn’t know existed. 🖨
- Top 5 Videos: How 3D printing is helping the Ukrainian army. 👍
- How much would you pay for a virtual sofa? 🤑
- Should interior designers be paying attention to the Metaverse? 🧑🎨
- CNN+ is shutting down just one month after launch (well, that didn’t last long). 🤷♂️
- What leaking helium-3 gas can tell us about Earth’s origin. 🌎
- Glowing spider fossils prompt breakthrough research on treasure trove of amazingly well-preserved specimens. 🕷
- Plasma-powered rocket designed for Deep Space Exploration. 🚀
- Time might not exist, according to Physicists. ⏰
- First U.S. open-air test of genetically modified Mosquitoes deemed a success. 🦟
- Netflix is going after password sharing. Here’s how it’s likely to work. 👮
- Turmoil at ‘Russia’s Google’ amid sanctions, war, and censorship. 🇷🇺
MEDICINE & SCIENCE
- Can cancer be treated by changing its cells? 🧫
- Forget these scientific myths to better understand your brain and yourself. 🧠
- Vitamin D: The Pac-Man of viruses, bacterial infections, and cancer cells. 👾
- A key brain region for substance use disorders now has a searchable atlas of distinct cell populations. 🗺
- New hope for multiple sclerosis sufferers as scientists ‘reverse symptoms’ with cells transplant. 🧬
- Decoding a direct dialog between the gut microbiota and the brain. 🦠
- Making the most of medicinal mushrooms. 🍄
- Cheap and Noninvasive: Detecting HPV in sanitary pads. 🔬
- New findings reveal phagocytes do not fully mature until after birth, contradicting previous assumptions that they mature during embryonic development. 👼
- Study reveals the different ways the brain parses information through interactions of waves of neural activity. 📑
- Study highlights effect of acne in adult women on quality of life and mental health. 🙋♀️
- How genetics is giving way to a new science of life. 👩🔬
- New technology is enabling neuroscientists to make increasingly detailed wiring diagrams that yield new insights into brain function. 🧠
- Antidepressants’ unexpected effect on quality of life. 💊
- New cancer diet studies confirm effects of veggies and red meat. 🥩
- Olive Oil: Why it’s healthier than other cooking oils. 🫒
CANNABIS & PSYCHEDELICS
- As psychedelic drugs are poised to join the mainstream, what is the role of the prescriber? 👩⚕️
- In a brain-to-brain comparison with traditional antidepressants, psilocybin is the clear winner. 🧠
- Scientists used brain scans to see how magic mushrooms battle depression. 🍄
- Akanda to acquire Portugal-based Holigen, securing a cannabis sector leadership position in Europe. 💰
- Gut feelings – the intriguing connection between psychedelics and the microbiome. 🧫
- Psilocybin could be therapeutic breakthrough for addiction. 🤯
- A psychedelic therapist allegedly took millions from a Holocaust survivor, highlighting worries about elders taking hallucinogens. 🙏
- Brain regeneration is real: This is how to do it. ♻️
- Magic mushrooms are giving investors a bad trip. 📉
SPORTS
- Russians banned from Wimbledon. 🎾
- Chelsea secure last-minute 1-0 win over weakened West Ham despite Jorginho’s penalty miss. 🥅
- Liverpool 2-0 win to leave Everton in bottom three. ⚽️
- Idriss Diallo elected president of the Ivorian football federation. 🏟
- Iga Swiatek claims fourth consecutive title at Porsche Tennis Grand Prix. 🎾
- Bellator 279: Cris Cyborg retains featherweight title in Hawaii. 🏆
- Untouchable Tyson Fury destroys Dillian Whyte’s dream as new challenge beckons. 🥊
- Emilia Romagna Grand Prix: Max Verstappen wins as Charles Leclerc makes costly error. 🏎
- MotoGP: World champion Fabio Quartararo triumphs in Portugal. 🏍
💲 Noteworthy Stocks & Assets:
- Netflix (NASDAQ: $NFLX) lost more than a third of its value this week, shedding more than $50B in market capitalization. The day after earnings, shares tumbled 35%. The last time the stock fell like that was nearly 18 years ago, on Oct. 15, 2004. Netflix stock slipped nearly 41% that day, all the way to a split-adjusted $1.47 from $2.49 the session before. It’s a staggering loss for a company that is an original FAANG stock, considered a bedrock of growth stocks. Netflix lost a net 200,000 subscribers for the quarter and forecast that it would shed 2M more in the current quarter. That’s launched talk of whether the company is saturating its total addressable market. On the earnings call the company seemed ready to throw a kitchen sink at the problem (including monetizing free-riding viewers and creating an ad-supported tier).
🚨 Investment Opportunity: Ridgeline Therapeutics 🔬
Brought to you by Longevity Technology:
Longevity.Technology is fundraising for Ridgeline Therapeutics, a US biotechnology company, that is on a mission to reverse age-related decline in muscle strength, which is linked to lower quality of life and increased morbidity. 💪
Ridgeline’s NNMTi is slated to be the first FDA-approved drug to reverse declines in muscle strength; it is protected by a strong IP portfolio and will be delivered as a daily pill to restore muscle strength and function in the elderly. NNMTi demonstrates superior characteristics compared to competing therapeutics. 👩🔬
Preclinical safety and efficacy data have significantly de-risked IND filing and there is a clear path for expansion of clinical indication and clinical development; a fast FDA approval strategy will be employed by the team. ☑️
The experienced leadership team of successful entrepreneurs and scientists has secured $8.95 million in grant funding.
➡️ Link to the deck ⬅️
Earnings spotlight:
Monday, April 25 – Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) and Activision Blizzard (ATVI).
Tuesday, April 26 – Centene (CNC), Alphabet (GOOG), General Motors (GM), Chipotle (CMG), Microsoft (MSFT), UPS (UPS), PepsiCo (NASDAQ:PEP), General Electric (GE) and Visa (V).
Wednesday, April 27 – Boeing (NYSE:BA), Humana (NYSE:HUM), T-Mobile US (TMUS), Ford Motor (F), Meta Platforms (FB), Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ:KHC), and Amgen (AMGN).
Thursday, April 28 – Twitter (TWTR), Comcast (CMCSA), Merck (MRK), Caterpillar (CAT), Northrop Grumman (NOC), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Intel (INTC), Altria (MO), Domino’s Pizza (NYSE:DPZ) and PayPal (PYPL).
Friday, April 29 – AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV), Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMY), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Chevron (NYSE:CVX), Phillips 66 (PSX) and AbbVie (ABBV).
IPOs expected to start trading this week:
IPOs expected to price in the week ahead include Tenon Medical (TNON) and SaverOne (SVRE) on April 27. Some of the key IPO lockup period expirations to watch include Rent the Runway (RENT), Arteris (AIP), Marpai (MRAI), GlobalFoundries (GFS), Fluence Energy (FLNC), Solo Brands (DTC), Udemy (UDMY), HireRight Holdings (HRT), Aura Biosciences (AURA), and Entrada Therapeutics (TRDA).
What Moved the Markets:
The Dow Jones average suffered its worst beating since October 2020 on Friday, capping a fourth straight weekly decline, as mostly positive earnings reports failed to ease worries about rising inflation or the near-certainty that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by at least a half point at its meeting next month. Friday’s nearly 1,000 point drop in the Dow followed a speech by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday that signaled support for a 50-basis point rate hike is very much on the table since taming inflation is “absolutely essential.” Rates jumped on Powell’s remarks before the benchmark 10-year yield eased slightly on Friday to about 2.9%. Next week will see earnings reports from the four biggest U.S. companies by market cap: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet. In the week just concluded, the Dow finished down 1.9% in its ninth losing week of the last 11, while the S&P 500 fell 2.8% and the Nasdaq sank 3.8%.
U.S. Indices
Dow -1.9% to 33,811. S&P 500 -2.8% to 4,272. Nasdaq -3.8% to 12,839. Russell 2000 -3.2% to 1,941. CBOE Volatility Index +24.3% to 28.21.
S&P 500 Sectors
Consumer Staples +2.1%. Utilities +0.9%. Financials +2.6%. Telecom -2.2%. Healthcare +1.1%. Industrials +2.%. Information Technology +2.%. Materials +1.7%. Energy +1.%. Consumer Discretionary +1.9%.
World Indices
London -1.2% to 7,522. France -0.1% to 6,581. Germany -0.2% to 14,142. Japan +0.% to 27,105. China -3.9% to 3,087. Hong Kong -4.1% to 20,639. India -2.% to 57,197.
Commodities and Bonds
Crude Oil WTI -5.8% to $100.75/bbl. Gold -2.2% to $1,932.5/oz. Natural Gas -11.4% to 6.465. Ten-Year Treasury Yield +2.7% to 2.91.
Forex and Cryptos
EUR/USD -0.11%. USD/JPY +1.76%. GBP/USD -1.68%. Bitcoin -2.4%. Litecoin -4.6%. Ethereum -2.6%. XRP -8.4%.
Top S&P 500 Gainers
United Airlines Holdings (UAL) +14%. Kimberly-Clark (KMB) +10%. International Business Machines (IBM) +9%. Twitter (TWTR) +9%. M&T Bank (MTB) +8%.
Top S&P 500 Losers
Netflix (NFLX) -37%. Enphase Energy (ENPH) -19%. HCA Healthcare (HCA) -19%. Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods (WBD) -17%. DENTSPLY SIRONA (XRAY) -17%.
🎯 Stocks On Our Radar:
- Biohaven Pharmaceutical (NYSE: BHVN) 📈 – $200 target
- AgeX (NYSE: AGE) 📈 – $3.00 target
- Portage Biotech (NASDAQ: PRTG) 📈 – $30 target
- Wuhan General Group (OTC: WUHN) 📈 – $3.00 target
- Agronomics Ltd (OTC: AGNMF) 📈
- Regent Pacific Group Ltd. (HKG: 0575) 📈
- ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK.CN) (OTC: IDKFF) 📈
🏆 Quotes That Inspire Us:
“The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.” – Henry Ford
📖 Word Of The Week:
Elicit means “to get (a response, information, etc.) from someone.”
The final amount raised by the charity walk elicited cheers from the crowd.
The teacher’s question elicited no response.
❔ Did You Know:
Google images was literally created after Jennifer Lopez wore that infamous dress at the 2000 Grammys. So many people were searching for her outfit, the search engine added an imagine function.
📚 Books We Are Reading:
- If Our Bodies Could Talk: Operating and Maintaining a Human Body – by James Hamblin.
- Proof: The Science of Booze – by Adam Rogers.
- Failure: Why Science Is So Successful – by Stuart Firestein.
- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century – by Yuval Noah Harari.
- Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body – by Jo Marchant.
🤣 One-Liners:
A seven-year-old girl came home and told her mom, “A boy in my class asked me to play doctor.”
“Oh no, honey. What happened?”
“Nothing, he made me wait 45 minutes and then double-billed the insurance company.”
📽 A Must Watch & Listen:
- Barry Ritholtz interviews Luana Lopes Lara, co-founder of KalshiEX LLC. Kalshi has developed an asset class – “event contracts” – and a financial exchange for trading on the outcome of events. (such a refreshing interview)
- Barry Ritholtz interviews Mark Jenkins, head of global credit at the investment firm The Carlyle Group. Carlyle has more than $300 billion of assets under management.
- Dr. Peter Attia on nutrition, disease prevention, psychedelics, sleep, and more.
- When a devastating accident leaves pro surfer Koa Smith with a traumatic brain injury and depression, he searches for answers where ancient rituals meet modern science.
📆 Upcoming Events:
Join Juvenescence on the 10th of May, for a Master Investor webinar, Investing in the Future of Longevity – the Ketone Chapter.
May 10, 2022 | London | 5pm BST (12pm EST)
The webinar, which features a live Q&A, will explain the science and value of ketosis and features Dr. Stubbs and other world-leading academics, who will join Jim Mellon and Greg Bailey to discuss the science, and the potential, and the returns that can be expected.
Our very best wishes for a brilliant upcoming week! 💪
Respectfully yours,
The IBR Team
Please send any news, comments, or stock ideas to jeff@internetbullreport.com and follow IBR on Twitter @IBullReport
All content provided by Internet Bull Report is for informational and educational purposes only and is not meant to represent trade or investment recommendations.
